Daylight Saving Time ends November 6, 2022
Before becoming a parent, I would always forget about Daylight Saving Time until the last minute. I would change my clock that day and over the next couple of days I would adjust. I always loved the fall back time change and getting an ‘extra’ hour of sleep. But, once I became a parent I realized my baby wasn’t going to be giving me any extra sleep!
How to help your child prepare for Daylight Saving Time
As with everything, there are always options to help prepare for this change. One option is to do what I mentioned above and not change anything. If you take that approach, it’s safe to expect you’ll have some early mornings while everyone adjusts to the change in the days that follow.
Take a gradual approach
If you like to prepare ahead of time, you can take a gradual approach. Starting a week before the time change, you can start shifting the schedule forward by ten minutes. This will include bedtime, wakeup time, naps, and meals. The idea is with this that by the day before the time change bedtime will be an hour later than usual, and then with the time change it will be right back to the usual bedtime.
Take a less gradual approach
If you have less time to prepare, or if starting a week ahead just sounds like too much, you can still make adjustments to the schedule. Instead of 10 minute increments, you can shift the schedule forward by 20-30 minutes over the course of a few days. Again, you’ll want to shift everything in the routine to help adjust to the new bedtimes.
Use the time change to your advantage
If your child’s bedtime/wakeup times have been later than you’d like, you can use this as an opportunity to shift everything earlier without having to actually change the routine.
Tips to remember during this time
- Keep your routine consistent! If your child is used to their bedtime routine, this will help them with knowing that it is time for sleep.
- Expose your child to light upon waking up to help their circadian rhythm adjust (this helps us too!).
- Make sure to get lots of physical activity during the day, this helps everyone sleep better.
- Dim any bright lights and turn off screens 1-2 hours before bedtime
- Expect that early wakeups will happen, but don’t reinforce them. Keep the lights out until it’s time to get up.
- Keep the sleep environment consistent with blackout shades and white noise to help prevent any changes from outside interfering with sleep.
Want more information on how to prepare for this time change?
Grab our free guide! It contains more details on each of the strategies discussed above along with additiional tips to help with better sleep every day.
